Restaurateur to give $100G to Meals on Wheels
Dennis Riese, chief executive of the Riese Organization, which owns about 100 restaurants in New York City. (Undated) Credit: Handout
You probably don't know it, but most of the eateries you see at Penn Station in Manhattan are owned or operated by one man -- Locust Valley resident Dennis Riese, whose father and uncle started in the restaurant business 70 years ago when they bought a rundown luncheonette on 40th Street off Fifth Avenue. They grew from there.
The Riese Organization, as the company is now known, owns about 100 restaurants in New York City, including the TGI Friday's, KFC, Pizza Hut, Nathan's, Häagen-Dazs and other lesser-known food shops at Penn.
But Riese, the company's chief executive, has not just been providing commuters and others with food. His company has raised $2 million for the Meals on Wheels program in the past 20 years.
On Monday, Riese will present the organization with a $100,000 check, money raised in the last year from customers at his restaurants, the Riese Organization and his own donation.
Riese said in most years, he has handed over $150,000, but the recession hampered giving.
Riese went on a meal delivery in 1986. "It was emotional and for me life changing," he said, describing the sight of a disabled, poverty-stricken 92-year-old man in a dingy apartment. Riese saw skyscrapers outside the window of the man's apartment, denoting great wealth in the city. "It was a contradiction," he said.
